Thursday, March 30, 2006

The world of the combat sports is changing at an almost breathtaking pace. The state of California has emerged as the home of dozens of mixed martial arts events, with the North American attendance record already broken in the first sanctioned show there and possibly set to be surpassed again in the next month or two. Yet it was only this month, March 2006, that the state athletic commission began sanctioning shows there at all.

The new mixed martial arts league, the International Fight League (IFL), officially announced this week that its debut show, to be held April 29 in Atlantic City, will be televised on tape delay on Fox Sports Net in the U.S. And late last week Marc Ratner, executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission and perhaps the most respected person in boxing who heads any of these state commissions, announced that he was leaving his post to become an executive with the UFC.

While these advances were made, mixed martial arts remains illegal in New York, as do other well-established combat sports, including kickboxing. A Draconian 1997 law mandating such prohibitions on most “combative sports” remains in effect. While major boxing states including New Jersey, Nevada, Texas, and now California have all sanctioned such events and regulate them through their athletic commissions, the politicians in New York, like the “segregation forever” crowd in the 1960s, are still standing in the courthouse door.

This week on No Holds Barred we address these developments and issues.

We speak with Pat Miletich, a former UFC champion who is now coach of the Silverbacks team in the IFL.

We speak with Marc Ratner about why he is stepping down from his post as executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission and taking a position as an executive with the UFC.

And we speak with Ron Scott Stevens, current Chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, about the status of boxing and mixed martial arts in New York.